Abu Hamza's US terror trial today heard that the Muslim preacher formerly worked for MI5 and co-managed a strip club in London's Soho.

Hamza's lawyer produced documents apparently from Scotland Yard that he said showed the radical cleric worked as an intermediary for the UK spy agency and had helped police defuse tensions with the Muslim community in Britain.

Abu Hamza said he had also worked as a bouncer and a receptionist in London. Credit: PA Wire

Hamza also told the New York court he had run a strip club in central London's party district after coming to the capital in the 1980s to "make money and enjoy myself", adding that some of the employment he gained was "on the wrong side of morality".

Hamza was extradited from the UK to America two years ago to face a string of terrorism charges, which he denies.

The 56-year-old cleric, was extradited from Britain to the US two years ago, countered three weeks of government evidence with answers to rapid-fire questions posed by defence lawyer Joshua Dratel.

"No," Mustafa calmly replied repeatedly as Mr Dratel asked him if he participated in a December 1998 kidnapping in Yemen, tried to organise a terrorist training camp in the US of Oregon, aided al Qaida or sent anyone to Afghanistan to engage in terror training.

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The prosecutor in the US trial against Islamic preacher Abu Hamza told jurors that he was part of a global campaign to spread terror.

Opening arguments have been made at Abu Hamza's trial in New York Credit: Johnny Green/PA Archive/Press Association Images

Federal prosecutor Edward Kim described Mr Hamza as a man with a mission to establish an al-Qaida training camp in the US, and said the defendant financed and sent two men to Bly in Oregon to set up the compound to train others.

Abu Hamza had been jailed since 2004 in Britain on separate charges. He was extradited to the US in 2012 only after the US agreed he would face a civilian trial not a military one, and that the death penalty was off the table.